The Generali Approach to Open Innovation

That’s the motto for innovation at Generali, a leading insurance group in Europe with a global presence. It refers to the belief that innovation can come from anywhere, both within the company and from external sources.

As a 190+ years old company, innovation has always been a central focus and remains a core part of their current strategic plan. Innovation is a catalyst to drive business outcomes, and an enabler of growth, differentiation, new solutions, and talent acquisition.

This understanding has led to the establishment of an innovation platform that encompasses various pillars to harness the full potential of innovation.

Open Innovation Through CorpUp

Open innovation can be compared to a high-speed highway where ideas are quickly launched, prototyped, and executed. The infrastructure for such a highway requires the right tools to reduce redundancies and wasted efforts.

To effectively collaborate with startups, they have set up two large CorpUp Studios where prototypes of new products and business models are created, to be fed into BU’s or continue their development as new venture.

CorpUp studios are physical spaces in separate locations, HITS House of Insurtech in Zurich, Switzerland, and Future4care with a focus on health tech in Paris, France. They ensure that collaboration between a Generali entity and startups produces concrete and measurable results, in an efficient and industrialized way (i.e. without “reinventing the wheel” each time).

To attract the right talent, CorpUps focus on entrepreneurial profiles who have experience working with startups or have been intrapreneurs themselves. The opportunity to make innovation happen quickly, combined with the scale of a large corporate, is appealing to these talents.

Governance is like a good haircut - you only notice it when it's not there. Generali's CorpUps are protected against the daily doses of bureaucracy that is inevitably part of large corporations.

The company believes that a platform approach works best in managing innovation in a larger, decentralized group. Their platforms, which are shared by the entire organization and by all business units, are helpful in avoiding the pain-points common in any multinational group. It is common to lack global visibility of ongoing projects, leading to redundancies and wasted effort. This problem is particularly pronounced in open innovation contexts where different business units may be working on similar projects with the same startup without knowledge of each other's efforts.

A platform helps avoid redundancies and duplications that often occur in multinational groups. Also, it can break down internal silos and foster collaboration, facilitating convergence and scaling of innovation across the company.

Democratizing Innovation Through Innovation Fund

Beyond their open innovation efforts, the company's Innovation Fund supports ideas from anyone within the company. The fund allows any employee of Generali to launch new ideas and execute innovation, prioritizing early stage and bold ideas.

The fund has received immense attention, receiving more than 340+ ideas of which 150+ have been funded. It is powered by two main engines: an early-stage engine and an acceleration engine. Through the early-stage engine, Generali is able to fully fund up to €50,000 for projects that are in their early stages. Idea owners only need to share a PowerPoint presentation of their project.

The acceleration engine is dedicated to projects at a mature stage and co-funds up to 50% of the project. The project owner is able to present the project before Generali's internal innovation board, similar to a classic VC board. The board evaluates projects and decides which one to fund. The focus is predominantly on Horizon 2 and 3 projects, with Horizon 3 projects receiving full funding.